Allegedly aimed at “helping them understand the issue and make their own decisions about what actions are needed,” the manuscript was compiled by rookie scientists and retirees with strong ties to oil and gas pressure groups.

The Fraser Institute booklet, Understanding Climate Change, released March 6, evades debate as to whether the world is warming or to what extent warming is caused by human activity. Instead, a Fraser official said it was,

nice descriptions of what scientists know about the climate, how they are measuring it and what still remains uncertain.”

Fraser has received annual grants from oil-giant ExxonMobil and has a long history of opposing environmental laws and regulations, mainly by throwing seeds of doubt on the seriousness, consequences and solutions to global warming on behalf of the fossil-fuel industry.

The basis for the current Fraser Institute booklet, ironically, is the same 1,600-page IPCC report it sought to trash a year ago. Not surprisingly, Fraser is pitching the identical message in its current diatribe – that climate change may not be happening or, if it is happening, it may be “a good or bad thing.”

It appears the main weapon for countering the compelling scientific evidence is uncertainty!

I’m very pleased the kids are being given a neutral message. Kids are easily influenced and scared and I would hate to see the twisted minds of eco-extremists influencing our childrens minds.

I’m also concerned at how much speculative hyperbole that passes as ‘climate science’ from IPCC computer models is in the public domain. Extreme weather, sea level rises, ice caps melting, droughts are all computer game assumptions that have no observational reality today.

It’s hard enough for adults to disseminate the extremist propoganda spoken by climate gurus let alone the children having to swallow this crud. Leave the kids out of it ok… or else!

Wanna keep kids from being scared? Don’t let them watch TV! Movies are bad enough, but sensationalized news shows focussing on random acts of violence should also be stoking your fire. What “or else” messages have you sent the networks? As for the Fraser Institute’s “neutral message” and lack of observational reality:
http://tinyurl.com/2zpt5x …FI says IPCC is alarmist – where’s the observational reality of that stance?

Kids can handle far off threats better than most. We don’t hide them from the fact that their grandparents die. We shouldn’t hide our best understanding of the future from them; the future is where they’ll spend the rest of their lives.

Ian Forrester, if anybodies got closed minds it’s the “debate is over” and “there’s a consensus” crowd. The debate isn’t over, it hasn’t closed yet, and in fact the real reason for global warming and cooling is coming to the fore - and it ain’t CO2.

As for the consensus, the IPCC total 2,500 scientists and researchers. 19,000 scientists have signed a petition against CO2 being a driver, that the Earth isn’t warming at an alarming rate and that we can’t do anything about climate - we’re puny compared to the main drivers such as the sun and water vapour.

I suggest you open your mind to the alternatives rather than go round blinkered and ignorant.

Ian Forester, climate science has still to be understood. I’m aware of that - are you? Nobody has explained yet precisely what drives climate but the ‘possibles’ are many and varied. The IPCC in 16yrs have only ever had computer models with CO2 hypothesis factored in to show CO2 as a climate driver. There is no actual proof. Fact.

The other candidates for climate driving are increasingly understood. The sun, cosmic rays which affect cloud cover, water vapour itself, salt and particles in the atmosphere and a number of other candidates are all down as very liekly drivers.

My heads not in the sand about climate science. It’s still to be resolved. Your head is up your passage if you think CO2 is it. Not only because all previous records show high CO2 levels have never driven Earths temperature but because previous warming events have all preceeded high CO2 levels by 400 to 1,400 years. In short CO2 is completly innocent in Earths entire history.

There are numerous lab experiments which have been conducted which show that CO2 warms surrounding gases when it is irradiated with IR radiation. You can check it out in text books, you do not have to go to the scientific literature to find such simple facts.

The amount of warming (forcing) by CO2 is well understood so stop saying that there is no proof, that just shows how much of a denier you are. Most of the deniers have moved on from “CO2 has no effect”. The rubbish you are posting just shows how little of the actual science you know and understand.

Such posts as yours are quite useful since it easily shows people how ignorant the AGW deniers are. So keep it up, no one gives a toot about the rubbish and rude comments you are posting.

And for your information there are numerous papers in the scientific literature showing the relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperature over geological time. Since you do not appear to understand, it shows that when, in the past, CO2 concentrations have been high, the temperature was correspondingly high. Once the high CO2 concentrations were lowered (buried and transformed into coal, oil and natural gas) the temperature cooled. We are presently reversing (in a very short time period) that natural effect.

Ian Forrester, is that it? “..numerous lab experiments” is all you’ve got. CO2 when put in a test tube may well move temperture a touch but out there in the big wide world its concentrations are 0.0038% of Earths atmosphere (380 parts per million) and such a ‘micro level’ of Earths blanket cannot and does not drive tamperature. Methane and especially water vapour are in far higher concentrations are are far more likely to have a blanket effect.

Please point me (and the IPCC who need it) toward CO2 being a temperature driver in Earths past because you appear to be the only person who’s found it!!!

There is more than a century of solid research and study on the issue of CO2 as a driver, and don’t pretend you don’t know it. The undercurrent of concern has been growing steading within the scientific community, even right through the so-called “predictions” of cooling in the 1970s. Even then then were more papers published in peer-reviewed journals about warming than any half-cocked op-eds about cooling. Back then, though, the general public didn’t have easy access to the information as we do now. The scientists were aware, but we hadn’t clued in yet.

You can’t negate the physics, JohnnyB. CO2 will react in a predictable way in combination with other elements under given circumstances. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is irrelevant unless you know how much it takes to cause damage. If 338ppm is safe and 339ppm is not, then you’d better be careful. It only takes one virus cell to kill an elephant, if it’s the right virus.

Tell me, has it ever occurred to you that the scientists might actually know what they are doing?

Regarding CO2 being a driver or there being a ‘tipping point’ there’s no hard evidence of either, even in the highly doctored IPCC resports. What happens in a lab or computer game simulation are merely scenarios. What happens in Earths atmosphere, which no computer simulation can simulate, is anybodies guess.

How CO2 and other gases and water vapour and clouds retain the suns heat is still to be established. But on balance the overwhelming majority of scientists and science points to many other factors driving Earths temperature up and down. I suggest you keep your mind open rather than side with a minority who only have scare stories, not science, to drive their debate.

JohnnyB, denying that CO2 is a greenhouse gas (which retains heat) is similar to denying that gravity is a force which affects objects on Earth.

Alterations of atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been proven to directly affect temperatures. Yes, other factors have been in play in the past, but the warming of the past 150 years or so has been the direct result of CO2 increases (as well as increases in other greenhouse gases) due to human activity. Nobody can dispute that.

As for the IPCC reports you claim are “highly doctored,” there are a few skeptical scientists, like Oerlemans and Christy, who have contributed to this effort and have agreed on the final wording of their respective chapters. If they had not agreed with this wording, their chapters would not be the way they are.

Regarding the computer models, they have been fairly accurate in their simulation of the past 150 years and prior, so they have been calibrated to the current environment. This leads most to believe that most model runs for the likely scenarios predicted by the IPCC (2 X CO2, etc.) will predict the results to 2100 and beyond fairly accurately (barring any tipping points occurring, which is increasingly likely).

So, JohnnyB, if you wish to refute the role of CO2 on atmospheric temperature, you ought to try and refute the role of the force of gravity on the planet Earth. You’ll look equally foolish doing both.

You are an insufferable bore, JohnnyB. Everytime one of you feeble-minded trolls trots out that laughable list of “19,000 leading scientists” I want to run from the room screaming. Lord knows, I try to be civil responding to these absurd claims – but it’s difficult and I feel a whole vocabulary of appropriate epithets struggling to get out!!!!!

One more time: Have a look at who is REALLY on these lists when all of the made-up names, names of people with only a passing expertise in the sciences, and the names of real scientists who didn’t know they had been “signed on” are removed. Take a good, hard look at them. Then have a look at the names and qualifications of the signatories to this document:
http://deoxy.org/sciwarn.htm. It’s a warning published more than 15 years ago that pretty accurately predicts the kind of trouble we are getting ourselves into.

It’s quality, not quantity, you twit. Oops. Sorry – that just slipped out.

Who are the 19,000 “signers” of the petition, and why can’t I find a way to check their credentials? Why’s there absolutely nothing to suggest that the list of 19,000 “names” wasn’t simply generated by a computer program?

Why’s the Global Warming Petition project so obsessed with Al Gore?

Why’s the Fraser Institute using scare tactics by predicting doom and gloom for the green economy?

I don’t know how many of the Oregon Petitions scientists are climatologists but 19,000 down to 1,000 could be a cruddy prediction, bit like IPCC computer models! How many of the IPCC’s 2,500 scientists are Degree or PHD’s in climatology do you know?

To conclude a speculation by someone else as you have done as ‘true’ like the IPCC does, is not good science. I’ve seen you haven’t asked any questions about Franks maths or thoroughly peer reviewed his work. Along with your ignorant over-confidence in an undecided science you demonstrate all the credentials for being an IPCC lead author and misleading people to flawed conclusions. Integrity undermined. Well done Stephen.

19,000 scientists on the Oregon Petition against Kyoto aren’t 400 scientists in the Senate Report and then 100 scientists in an Open Letter to the UN Secretary General. You appear to have left school without any maths whatsoever dim wit!

And the NY Heartland conference didn’t have 19 scientists, it was 200. I think the 19 you plucked from your light head was your latest IQ reading!

You display all the denialism of Jim Martin 3 weeks ago, executive director of the Colorado Depart of Public Health and Environment, when told of our NY conference said, “You could have a convention of all the scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth.”

Like you Mr. Martin has trouble with his maths because 200 scientists, or 19,000, don’t fit in a phone box. Just a bit worrying he’s so stupid and managed to be Executive Director - is this a case of jobs-for-the-boys amoung the AGW corruption crew?

You like Mr. Martin talk little more than weak lame attempts to discredit solid science and are to accuracy what the IPCC are to science - a lost cause.

The UN’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has just come back from an Antartica ‘fact-finding-mission’ claiming “we must do something to protect our beautiful planet.”

Strange that the UN Sec-Gen hasn’t read the report his own organisation, the IPCC, have placed under his nose that states there’s been no changes in Antartic temperatures, it’s not melting away, in fact it’s been going through normal cycles for the past 50 years.

How is it Ban Ki-Moon goes on a ‘fact finding mission’ and misses the facts so badly? Are his advisors mis-advising him? Were the IPCC not on hand to inform him Antartica is doing just fine? If this idiot can’t find the facts when they’re there in black and white at a cost of £millions in drafting and supporting science, what hope is there the UN will ever rule the planet with anything other than blind ignorance!

Johnnyb is another lying troll. Antarctica is not warming up as fast as the Arctic, because the southern hemisphere is mostly ocean, and the ocean absorbs heat. The northern hemisphere is mostly land so the north pole heats up faster than the south pole.

Precisely where am I a ‘lying troll’ with any fact I’ve said? I’ve warned you about making accustions you can’t back up at least twice before.

You say “Antarctica is not warming up as fast as the Arctic”. Please get your facts totaslly straight. Antarctica isn’t warming at all (and nor has the Earth for 10 year, since 1998). Antarctica’s temperature chart has been as interesting as watching paint dry for 50 years. It hasn’t moved one iota since Earth peeked in 1940.

And as my post makes clear, the UN Sec-Gen has those facts under his nose, so like you, my questin is when you have the facts in front of your nose, how do you get it so wrong?

In an open Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, His Excellency Ban Ki-Moon, 100 scientists from 100 countries advised “the UN climate conference taking the World in entirely the wrong direction.”

They claim “It is not possible to stop climate change, a natural phenomenon that has affected humanity through the ages.”

And also “these Summaries are prepared by a relatively small core writing team with the final drafts approved line-by-line by ­government ­representatives. The great ­majority of IPCC contributors and ­reviewers, and the tens of thousands of other scientists who are qualified to comment on these matters, are not involved in the preparation of these documents. The summaries therefore cannot properly be represented as a consensus view among experts.” http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=164002

Like the tobacco industry, climate change deniers devote great time and energy to keeping the “debate” alive hoping that the general public will believe that the science is unsettled, thereby minimising public support for taking action to address greenhouse gas emissions.

Never mind that the “debate” is entirely manufactured by the deniers themselves. Never mind that they will grasp at any argument, no matter how tenuous or patently ridiculous to keep the “debate” alive. Never mind that for them cherry picking and distorting real data and real science, making things up out of whole cloth, and telling bald faced lies are legitimate “debating” tactics. Never mind how many times their arguments are rebutted, debunked, destroyed and utterly shredded, they will continue to use the same arguments again and again and again hoping no one notices.

“Debating” them is, like playing whack-a-mole in a memory hole, an exercise in futility.

Exusian, you need to get your facts straight. Sea levels are rising and falling due to techtonic plates squashed after the last ice age and due to their constant (in geological time) movement.

The recent Kolker and Hameed study in 2007 states there’s many variabilities to how sea levels rise and fall, from air pressure to changes in tide, storms, volcanically induced ocean heat content variations, and in the Pacific Ocean, the El Nino Southern Oscillation. Namely it’s not a simple case of warmer temperature. Their research yields a global sea level rise near 1.1 mm per year which is well below IPCC and other estimates.

Sea level rise has been taking place almost monotonically over the past 8,000 years, with substantial decadal variability embedded in the trend. In 2001, the IPCC concluded that “No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected.” In 2007, IPCC notes “Global average sea level rose at an average rate of 1.8 [1.3 to 2.3] mm per year over 1961 to 2003. The rate was faster over 1993 to 2003: about 3.1 [2.4 to 3.8] mm per year. Whether the faster rate for 1993 to 2003 reflects decadal variability or an increase in the longer-term trend is unclear.” A key question is not whether sea level is rising, but rather, has there been any acceleration in the rise – the jury is still very much out on that issue.

Regarding polar ice melting Antarctic has appeared in a recent issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research by a team of scientists from Ohio State University, the University of Illinois, and the Goddard Space Flight Center; the research was funded by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs Glaciology Program. Monaghan et al. begin their lengthy (21 pages – quite long for geophysics) article noting that a previous research team studying Antarctica examined “station temperature records for the past 50 years and report statistically insignificant temperature fluctuations over continental Antarctica excluding the Antarctic Peninsula, with the exception of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which cooled by -0.17 K decade-1 for 1958–2000.” That is correct – despite all you have heard elsewhere on the subject, the South Pole has been cooling over the past half century.

Even the IPCC clearly states in their 2007 summary report “Antarctic sea ice extent continues to show inter-annual variability and localized changes but no statistically significant average trends, consistent with the lack of warming reflected in atmospheric temperatures averaged across the region.” Furthermore, IPCC just as clearly states “Current global model studies project that the Antarctic ice sheet will remain too cold for widespread surface melting and is expected to gain in mass due to increased snowfall.”

“Subtle near-surface temperature increases during winter from 1970 to 2000 are consistent with tropospheric warming from radiosonde records and a lack of winter SAM trends. Widespread but statistically insignificant (p > 0.05) warming over Antarctica from 1992 to 2005 coincides with a leveling off of upward SAM trends during summer and autumn since the mid-1990s. Weakly significant annual trends (p < 0.10) of about +1 K/decade are found at three stations in interior and coastal East Antarctica since 1992. The subtle shift toward warming during the past 15 years raises the question of whether the recent trends are linked more closely to anthropogenic influences or multidecadal variability.”

Frank Bi, re-read your ‘research’ as it says zilch! I suggest you read the IPCC Report. It mangles the stark conclusion in their usually obtuse language that there’s been no temperature change at the Antartic - which confirms other scientists research which shows no temperature change in the Antartic in 50 years.

I realise your head may be mangled from all the ice crashing images from the news and media stations but at some point you’ve got to face up to the facts the scientists are seeing no temperature changes in 50yrs and ice crashes into the sea every year, and has been for milleniums. Welcome to the Earths normal ebb and flow.

“Frank Bi, re-read your ‘research’ as it says zilch! I suggest you read the IPCC Report.”

Hahahaha.

You mention an unnamed paper by Monaghan et al., and when I provide a link to a paper which is by Monaghan et al. – and I show that it doesn’t conclude what you claim it concludes – you try to change the topic by telling me to read the “IPCC Report” and throwing out a pile of bullcrap about “news and media stations”.

It states “All records correlate significantly with all other records during all seasons from 1982 to 2001. Near-surface temperature trends are statistically insignificant on annual timescales within every data set analyzed, for both the longer (1960–2002) and shorter (1982–2001) periods.”

One of the authors of the Monaghan et al. group had previously examined trends in temperature “inferred from skin temperatures from Advanced Very Hi-Res’ Radiometer (AVHRR) instruments on polar orbiting satellites” and found “a statistically insignificant cooling trend over continental Antarctica from 1982 to 1998.” Monaghan et al. further note “recent literature suggests there has been little overall change in Antarctic near-surface temperature during the past 5 decades” and “the absence of widespread Antarctic temperature increases is consistent with studies showing little overall change in other Antarctic climate indicators during the past 50 years such as sea ice area and snowfall.”

Literally hundreds of articles could appear tomorrow re-confirming these results, and the IPCC could continue to report emphatically that Antarctica is not warming (and may well be cooling), and somehow, this will all translate into claims that “Antarctica is still warming and melting.” The truth from Antarctica is it ain’t warming or melting. Fact.

Yes, I’m reading the same paper, and the abstract – which I quoted above – shows that the paper does not conclude cooling.

In fact, it concludes there is a “subtle shift toward warming during the past 15 years”.

http://tinyurl.com/2667ec

So you can go shove your denialist “facts” up your orifice, thank you very much.

Of course you probably already know that your “facts” about Monaghan et al.’s conclusions are totally bogus, which is why you tried to dodge the topic by talking about something else… before I called you onto it.

Frank Bi, maybe if you weren’t so aggressively dumb you might cotton onto the fact that all the geological surveys in Antartica are pointing the same way on temperature.. the opposite way to which you are pointing.

Not only all the scientists but also the IPCC Reports even admit there’s no changes, except the seasonal fall and rise in Antartic temperature.

I know the truth is hard to get your head round when it’s buried so far up your backside! Welcome to the truth.. as you don’t like to hear it.

VJ,calling me a ‘liar’ gets you nowhere. You just look like a typical clueless green that swallows propoganda without checking out the facts. Check the IPCC Fourth Assesment Report, I think the statement on Antartica not having changed is at the end of Page 20. Alternatively check toe following references;

Do you bother to read your links? And the related stories at those links?
I did.
Haven’t checked the Arctic links yet, but your Antarctic references don’t help your ‘cause’ very much. Mainly hurt it in fact.
Concerning melting South American glaciers, from iceagenow.com: “I think it is caused by the El Nino phenomenon, which is caused by underwater volcanism, which is increasing due to the ice-age cycle.”
The only theory I could find involving volcanoes was from Adams, Mann and Ammann which has the volcano affecting the solar radiation reaching the surface, not the heat of the eruption.
Also from iceagenow.com a quote from Dr Nils-Axel Morner from “Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud”: “In about 1970, the sea level fell about 20 cm, for reasons involving probably evaporation or something.”
The official records at the Maldives record ocean level rise of 20 cm over the past 100 years and Dr Morner states it dropped that amount in one year?
That’s 8 inches. You would think someone else would noticed….
Of course Dr Morner is listed as an “Allied Scientist” at the NRSP which is chaired by Dr Timothy F. Ball.

Frank, if anyone’s full of doom and gloom it’s you moaning minnies! Carbon based fuels are the most effective, efficient way of fueling the Earth and have been for nearly 100yrs. None of the alternatives have proved otherwise to date (except Nuclear - which you eco-boys are pushing us into if you haven’t worked it out yet!) and until they demonstrate an ability to move 6Billion people around then I suggest you stop whinging about carbon fuels and just get on with life.

Stephen Berg, no I advocate telling the kids the truth. Which is the planets having one of its lovely warm spells which is an all too rare occurance in earths geological records. These rare warm periods leads to greater plant growth, greater speciasiation and a wealth of growth and life. And that CO2 levels, part of mans gift of industrialisation leads to faster plant growth - indeed if it quadrupled from present levels plants would grow bwteen 50% and 160% faster. I like the kids to hear the truth that the world has been in a productive spell since the 1940’s and we’re all enjoying the weather but a few people will moan about anything given no good reason so they’re best ignored.

Democracy is utterly dependent upon an electorate that is accurately informed. In promoting climate change denial (and often denying their responsibility for doing so) industry has done more than endanger the environment. It has undermined democracy.

There is a vast difference between putting forth a point of view, honestly held, and intentionally sowing the seeds of confusion. Free speech does not include the right to deceive. Deception is not a point of view. And the right to disagree does not include a right to intentionally subvert the public awareness.

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